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In childhood the main activity is in the Couplement and there
is but little irradiation from the higher principles of our
being: but when these higher principles act but feebly or rarely
upon us their action is directed towards the Supreme; they work
upon us only when they stand at the mid-point.
But does not the include that phase of our being which stands
above the mid-point?
It does, but on condition that we lay hold of it: our entire
nature is not ours at all times but only as we direct the
mid-point upwards or downwards, or lead some particular phase of
our nature from potentiality or native character into act.
And the animals, in what way or degree do they possess the
Animate?
If there be in them, as the opinion goes, human Souls that have
sinned, then the Animating-Principle in its separable phase does
not enter directly into the brute; it is there but not there to
them; they are aware only of the image of the Soul [only of the
lower Soul] and of that only by being aware of the body organised
and determined by that image.
If there be no human Soul in them, the Animate is constituted for
them by a radiation from the All-Soul.
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